I've always been a fan of leveling with bm, and I did so in beta, and what I found was that most of the group quests were fairly easy to solo with a tenacity pet and the right spec for pet healing/survivability. Something along the lines for this is what I would recommend to start off with...

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I really liked leveling up with a worm, the armor debuff adds a very nice amount of extra dmg, and the thing can take a hit like a champ when you spec it right. The 4 extra points are probably the most useful for tenacity pets as well, theres alot of abilities you'd want to pick up in the tenacity tree and having those 4 points really makes things easier. As you start leveling up going full gftt seems like your best bet because your pet will start going out of focus pretty quick with all your short cd abilities on autocast. After that I guess you can go back into the bm tree and fill out whatever you like. I never really used my beastial wrath CDs for leveling since I wanted to have them up in case I got ganked, but focused fire and catlike reflexes are nice talents to get more points into if you dont like longevity for leveling as much.

In response to khassandra, I definitely agree that it will be a useful pvp talent, the utility exotics can provide in pvp is pretty nice. But in terms of PvE dps exotics dont bring anything special to the table, and for the most part I feel you can pick up the most crucial pve dps pet talents.

I was using these macros on the PTR, but they are nothing special.

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/startattack
/cast Steady Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Rabid
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();


#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Kill Command
/use 13

I tested a rotation with Arcane Shot and without. I simply manually timed Arcane Shots. I was spec'd differently at various times trying different combos out, but I was always either 3/3 Longevity or 2/3. Either spec I still waited to use Kill Command with BW (and /use 13 is my Zerker's Call trinket).

I definitely think your best use for kill command is during bestial wrath. I was going with a massive use macro containing beastial wrath, kill command, blood fury, zerker's call, and rapid fire. I had to spam it a few times because apparently either blood fury or rapid fire was(is?) on the gcd so it wouldn't all cast at once but it worked well enough. I also think its a good idea to throw in call of the wild in a beastial wrath macro as well, if you pick it up at 70.

That's amazing if they keep that. As to the 'most don't bring xxx' I guess we're one of the not most. We have been running consistantly with 4 hunters for months now. If this CotW stacking stays, it will be great to offset them like you mentioned.

Also someone had mentioned the thought of throwing one MM in the mix with imp HM. This was actually something we considered right off the bat given the changes to SV I'll report back later on how that works out.

Apparently FI is not stacking anymore I haven't been able to confirm if it's raid wide yet, and I've read this entire thread and don't recall it being mentioned either, but I may have missed it.

Thanks to everyone for the great feedback and calculations. I will likely use one of the cookie cutter BM specs (50/11 or 49/12) with a Scorpid pet. The question in regards to Scorpids is what pet spec was used? I've seen the Cat spec but have not seen what distribution of points was used for the Scorpid. If I missed it, I apologize (I did a search on Scorpid but didn't see its spec).

I am very Pro-BM. Naturally I plan on a BM leveling spec and was tossing around the idea of this build to start out with... Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I am planning on either using a gorilla or bear to level, so I will skip Beast Mastery for the immediate time being. I do plan on taking the 51 point BM talent for the 4 pet talent points at 71 though (still using a gorilla or bear). I ignored Imp Revive to pick-up Focus Fire. I also didn't bother with Longevity so I could max out Cobra Strikes. Both the gorilla and bear have 10 sec CDs on their specials, which should be consistent enough for initial tanking in the early leveling stages. I felt I still needed to have at least 1 point in GFTT to keep my tanking pet gaining aggro.

I did drop 2 floating points into Imp Conc Shot over Mortal Shots. My thought process was to improve my kiting when soloing and Mortal Shots is not a big concern for leveling early on.

I was doing this without issue on the PTR just before they shut it down. Were you starved for focus possibly?

I was using the standard pettarget=exists etc with it and maybe that was the difference?

I can confirm that FI doesn't stack, and if you use the blizzard standard scrolling combat text, you're gonna hate raids with multiple bm hunters, it spams your screen so much its ridiculous. I do know that GC posted on the beta forums that FI is intended to be raid wide, which will be a nice bit of utility.

I really wish I was part of the stack the hunter guilds that are out there, being stuck in healer or tank grps was really frustrating, but having raid wide totems/auras will make things so much better now. As for staggering or stacking call of the wild, I'm a fan of at least starting off stacking it with everyone popping their CDs. Not sure if at 70 aggro will be able to support this working right at the start of the fight, but seeing multiple bm hunters popping BW and having multiple calls of the wild on them is pretty nice. After that depending how each hunter is specced you might end up staggering them anyway because of differences in longevity. Now this will all go by the way side if blizzard fixes this, which I feel they will since I doubt a multiplicative buff like this is intended to be stackable.

Lihvera, I believe in the last patch they fixed it so that explosive shot was once again benefitting from mortal shots. The shot itself though is still so terribly tuned that it really isnt doing the type of dmg it needs to be doing to make up for the lack of dmg from the rest of the spec.

mattaos, LOl thanks for the schoolin.... I have been playing with different specs but that was a clear explaination.
As for level 80. As a Pve raid hunter where are you sticking your final 10 points?

Feel free to school this one: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Beta testers have reported that it is in fact affecting ES now.

currently SV spec:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunt...00000000000000

Any suggestions/improvements?

Is there a useful survival spec out there for hunters at 70?

I know BM does the most DPS but I would like to know if there is a feasible Survival spec or if you can point me to the page number if there is one in this thread I would appreciate it thanks

I've been looking at alot of different BM spec from different people, and most of them seem to be skipping "Animal Handler". Shouldn't "Animal Handler" be something you should have since you pet tends to miss alot. Here is the lvl 70 BM spec I would like to try, thoughts?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Thanks. So, if I'm not mistaken, as a fairly casual PvE Survival Hunter:

- My damage is going to come from Autoshot, Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting, and my pet.
- Mortal Shots will only affect Explosive Shot; its 5-point cost is probably not worth it?
- Improved Tracking will only affect Autoshot; its 5-point cost is probably not worth it? (Except what else ya gonna take.)
- L&L is probably worthwhile
- Noxious Stings is probably worthwhile
- Sniper Training is probably not worthwhile, due to totem range and infrequency of Kill Shot usage
- Hunting Party probably only needs 2-3 points to keep it up full time (but see below)
- Hunter v Wild and Careful Aim are both worthwhile

Is that more or less on-target?

* Hunting Party -- The one advantage I can see to proccing more often than the duration is that if at, say, 0 seconds, members 1-10 receive the buff, and five seconds later when it procs again, members 12-14 are now at lower mana than several members in 1-10, they could pick up the refresh while the old buff continues ticking on the members who got the first proc. I guess the question is whether there are enough mana users and few enough replenishment providers to make that useful.

If you'd read any of the last 10 pages, you'd see that Hunter Hit Rating now transfers to our Pet. Animal Handler is mostly worthless, now.

I want to be careful speaking to much about level 80 personally. I was not blessed with a beta key and most all my information comes from what I have read on the beta forums. I am thinking, in light of the recent Readiness fix, of a L.80 build like this... Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I basically just expanded my talent choices in the MM tree. Filled out 5/5 Mortal Shots, even though I would prefer Imp Tracking, but in order to get down to Readiness I have to dump all my points into MM. With that being the case, Mortal Shots will provide the best DPS in the upper MM tiers.

I maxed 3/3 Focused Aim, since hit is something that does not seem to be scaling well from L.70 to L.80 and hit is a must for max DPS. Plus the push back reduction will come in handy I am sure.

I maxed 2/2 GFTT, since crit is also something that seems to lacking some in early L.80 raiding. Assuming I retain a majority of my T6 gear for early raiding (this seems to be the cases per the beta forums), my crit will not be nearly as effective as it now. The 50 focus gen should produce keep my pet with available focus at even a much less crit rate.

I maxed 2/2 Rapid Killing for the reduction in Rapid Fire CD.

And finally, I grabbed Readiness. This is an excellent DPS talent for BM. With 2/3 Longevity and BW Glyph I will have (I believe) a CD of 80 sec. on BW. Now I have back-to-back BW procs and Rapid Fire procs to work with and much greater DPS gain than an exotic pet can provide (or 4 extra pet talent points) imo.

A L.80 beta tester could possibly shed some light on this question though to clarify or expound upon.

I really wish Blizzard would just make Steady Shot an "On next attack" ability, would solve alot of problems really easily, GCD is less of a problem, Steady would scale w/ haste, and our mobile DPS in arenas would be increased. They just need to make it scale w/ weapon dmg, and then make the mana cost scale w/ weapon speed(like shiv).

This would be an excellent change to have, but the problem is in balancing our DPS. A change like this would cause our DPS to sky rocket by simply stacking haste, which (if you have seen) is in an abundance on our T7 gear. Of course, this coming from a PvE PoV and a change like this to SS would definitely benefit hunters in arenas for on-the-move DPS and faster mana regen from AotV.

Can some of the beta or ptr testers please list some of the macros they are using now that 3.0 is live? Im particularly interested in BM macros. Thanks in advance.

Read about a dozen posts up... http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28573-h...65/#post936020

Macros are basically the same as TBC, except for the infamous "spam macro."

On the live server right now patch 3.0.2 what is the highest dps spec for a hunter and what is the best pet / pets talents?

Maybe I am wrong and please feel free to correct me if I am. But until Wotlk comes out, Putting 3 pts into longevity before you are raiding seems pointless. Granted in the end game boss fights it will definitely be points well spent. But since 70-80 is mostly grinding short fight wouldnt the points be better spent elsewhere?